Link rot

Link rot refers to the phenomenon where a link on a webpage once used to take the webpage's visitor to another page, but no longer does.

Due to the constantly changing nature of the internet, where things get deleted and moved around, link rot happens quite often.

Naturally, as the internet ages, link rot will become increasingly common.

Mitigation

Ways to combat link rot:

• link to sources that do not look "fly-by-night"
  • e.g. well-known newspapers and official reference sites
• link to URLs that have a simpler structure
  • i.e. not too many subfolders and computer-generated page names
• use the wayback machine of the web archive
  • that website will copy the contents of the page to ensure a permanent alternative link
  • using only the wayback's link could hurt the archived website so we should try to provide both the original URL (with web archive URL in brackets), e.g.
    • joncoded.com (wayback)
  • that would allow the reader to choose between the current and archived versions, while also ensuring the reader know the intended version of the page (without having to continuously check the page for changes ... or deletions)
• avoid linking to files (e.g. PDFs) and host them on the same server as our own websites
  • i.e. if this does not violate any copyright laws